So I’m sitting in a department meeting with the upper school science department. They’re a bunch of go-getters because they somehow managed to go as a team to this multi-day conference in New York about standards-based assessment (SBA) in science education. That means measuring student achievement on the basis of clear, transparent and fine-grained standards of knowledge and skill. The pure distillation of the approach even eschews report cards with letter grades as a convenient but ultimately unhelpful way to document student learning. SBA teachers build rubrics (graphic organizers of learning standards) often with explicit levels of proficiency and then use them as the basis of student assessment. Anyway, what makes the science team so impressive is that they went to this conference and then were determined to immediately implement an SBA approach to assessment in a school community that tends to get pretty nervous about any modifications to the transcript that will paper the way to college and university.
One of the usual features of an SBA approach is to offer chances for students to retake assessments to demonstrate competence on skills and knowledge they initially struggle with. Sometimes teachers call these chances the cheeky term "recovery options.” As the science department starts to grapple with the rationale and logistical challenges of offering recovery options to their students, worries emerge and I confess they resonate with me. First, what are saying to kids by offering them recovery options about personal responsibility? Second, does a system that provides multiples chances to show what you know and can do coddle kids to the point that we’re no longer preparing them to excel in an increasingly fast-paced and competitive workplace?
What are we saying to kids about personal responsibility when we offer them recovery options? One one hand, we’re perhaps saying that a kid doesn’t have to prepare too rigorously for an assessment because if they blow it they’ll have a chance to take it again. But here’s the thing: They’ll have to take it again. So what does that say about personal responsibility? I think one thing kids could understand is that they can choose to blow off preparing for an assessment if they want, but if they want to do well they’ll have to eventually choose to prepare to do their best. Without recovery options, students know that the teacher is saying, “Hey, this is your moment to show what you can do. If you blow it, too bad.” Traditionally, kids are motivated as much by fear and anxiety of a single opportunity to demonstrate ability. In this usual approach — the one I knew growing up — I experienced the motivation to prepare for an assessment as external. It was the teacher saying this is your one shot, so you better study hard. I didn’t always feel that the motivation was coming from my own desire, but rather the anxiety I experienced by the teacher imposing on me the one time I could show I what I could do.
With recovery options, it’s of course possible that students could blow off the initial assessment and do quite poorly. Of course, students can also do the same in the traditional system, and then that’s the end of the story. With recovery options, the student who does poorly either because they’re struggling with comprehension or motivation will be faced with the consequences of their limitations and then challenged to do something about them. They now have the opportunity to either seek additional help to understand the material or discuss with the teacher, parents, friends, professionals their motivational challenges. In terms of personal responsibility, there might be more of an opportunity for growth of this important disposition in a system with recovery options than without. At least it doesn’t seem to me that saying to a kid, “Yeah, you can blow this test off if you want. But the request for you to show what you know isn’t going to recede into the misty past. You’ll have to wallow in the consequences of your decision because recovery options keep knocking on your door to say you can do better. Are you going to take responsibility to try?”
Regarding the second concern about schools abrogating their duty to prepare young people to excel in the workplace, I suppose the real question is the relationship between SBA models with recovery options and the emerging conditions of the 21st century workplace. There are probably jobs in which it’s essential that one get it right the first time, and only people who are quick learners who thrive in high-stakes situations that don’t offer remedies for failure need apply. If a Martian were to come down to earth and we asked the alien to infer the conditions of the 21st century workplace on the basis of traditional grade-based assessment and no recovery options, the Martian might conclude that the vast proportion of 21st century jobs involve singular, high-stakes pitches to clients in a competitive and fast-moving corporate environment. My wife’s friend, Emily, is a marketing executive in the pharmaceutical industry. She works under tight time constraints, flies to pitch meetings with potential clients, and gets one shot to win their business. Emily probably does great in a traditional assessment model without recovery options.
But what about the backend workers at her firm after she wins the account? I’m talking about the creative types who are building visuals and copy in support of a marketing strategy. Do they need to get it right the first time? No. What they need to excel is a different disposition — the ability to throw out ideas, take critical feedback, and then try again to get it right. What I’m trying to say is that we need an educational system that has a more inclusive conception of the personal strengths and dispositions that are valued in a range of jobs, and not just a narrow slice. Because a SBA model that provides rich feedback to guide subsequent effort and the provision of multiple opportunities to integrate that feedback into improved performance is exactly the sort of schooling that will prepare young people for certain kinds of jobs. For the Emily’s of the world who suffer from no deficit of intrinsic motivation, learn quickly and well, and thrive in high-stakes performance settings, they don’t need rich feedback and recovery options as much as her future co-worker who thrives more on rich feedback than simply performance rankings (like grades), and needs more time to get it right.
I think what this shows is that an assessment model that values a certain set of personal dispositions and cognitive abilities is often devaluing an alternate set that is not clearly less valuable in the grand scheme of things. Because while SBA and recovery options may seem indulgent or wrong-headed to those who value jobs that reward quick learning and high-stakes performance, they are exactly the sort of conditions conducive to jobs that reward the careful integration of feedback from multiple sources and the dispositional persistence necessary to stick with the long and frustrating twists and turns that characterize creative production.
